Our Class Blog 2017-2018

We have had a fantastic beach day today. We have had lots of fun in the sun and enjoyed cooling down this afternoon under the sprinkler.

Have a super weekend, see you all Monday for the last couple of days of Squirrels.

Friday 13th July 2018

What fantastic weather we have had for our whatever the weather week! The children have had super fun travelling around the world (see pictures from Tuesday) and today we enjoyed exploring the outdoors; developing our fine and gross motor development in the bike wash, our Literacy and Maths learning in our Italian restaurant, fishing and enjoying our ice lollies which we made.

** A little reminder; please remember that your child should come into school on Monday dressed in their PE shorts and trainers and their coloured t-shirt. Please apply suncream prior to school and ensure they have their water bottle. There is no need for your child to bring their bookbag.

Have a lovely weekend, see you on Monday.

Tuesday 10th July 2018

Squirrels have had fantastic fun on their around the world adventures today. We made our own passports and boarding passes and after lunch we boarded our plane and off we went.......

Friday 6th July 2018

The Squirrels have enjoyed a super week of learning. We had lots of fun completing our wacky hair and wigs obstacle courses and they showed great teamwork as they encouraged each other to complete the course. We have enjoyed a variety of Maths challenges this week and applied our Maths skills to a variety of context.

We all enjoyed our visit to the Church yesterday, the children showed lovely manners and listening skills during the visit and asked very well thought out questions to extend and support our learning. We all enjoyed ringing the church bell!

I look forward to seeing them all next week for our Summer 'whatever the weather week.'

Monday 25th June 2018

We couldn't wait until Friday to share our news; our butterflies have all hatched! We have observed them and this morning released them

into their natural habitat. We really enjoyed watching the butterflies be released and then enjoyed smelling the beautiful lavender.

Friday 29th June 2018

We have enjoyed exploring the wonderful world of minibeasts this week and particularly enjoyed being minibeast detectives yesterday. We found lots of creepy crawlies!

Enjoy the sunshine this weekend!

Friday 22nd June 2018

Squirrels welcomed a very special four legged guest into the classroom this week; Jasper the tortoise. We really enjoyed finding out lots of facts about him, ask your child if they can remember any of these.

We now have butterflies in the classroom, four have hatched so only one to go (fingers crossed). It is an amazing experience to watch this process.

We have been very busy mathematicians this week and the children have been transferring their learning to Explorer time and applying to different contexts; measuring on the building site, buying food at the shop.

Please continue to practise keywords and the spelling of them too as the children can then transfer this to their reading and writing.

Have a lovely weekend, see you all Monday.

p.s. The children stuck their own home learning in this week so you'll have to excuse if any is stuck in upside down!

Friday 15th June

Wow! We have had an absolutely fantastic week of learning. The Squirrels have been super Mathematicians, Authors and explorers this week.

In Maths we have been recognising, ordering and counting to 20 and beyond. Some of us are still getting a little confused when recognising numbers 11 to 20 so please do support your child to practise these at home. We have also been exploring sharing and doubling.

We welcomed some little creatures into our class last week; our caterpillars. This has inspired us to keep a diary to observe the changes and also to write stories based on the life cycle of a caterpillar.

The children have amazed me this week in all areas of learning. They have approached their learning with enthusiasm and enjoyed the challenges I have set them.

Don't forget that school is not open to the children on Monday. I look forward to seeing them next Tuesday for further adventures.

Friday 8th June

Apologies for the delay in uploading the blog but as I mentioned to some the other day, unfortunately I experienced technical difficulties.

I am pleased to now be able to share with you, photos from our fantastic visit to the New Forest Wildlife Park.

The children were wonderful and showed super listening skills and enjoyed sharing their knowledge with the park guides.

Friday 25th May 2018

We have had an absolutely fantastic half term of learning, it was lovely to see so many of you last week at our open afternoon to share your child's learning. To celebrate a wonderful half term, we enjoyed a lovely marble treat afternoon with Tiger and friends. The children made

fruit salad and iced biscuits, we sang songs and enjoyed the final instalment of our class Squirrels story.

A couple of requests:

If you are able to donate any old children's shoes or boots, bedding plants and compost then we would be very grateful of this to support our Verwood in bloom entry.

Have a fantastic half term week, see you all back at school on Monday 4th June.

Friday 18th May 2018

Last week Jungle adventurers, this week detectives!

We had a mystery to solve as we arrived at School yesterday to find a terrible mess and paw prints in Squirrels class. The Squirrels were keen to solve the mystery of what animal had visited and eaten all our fruit and drank our milk. We set to work straight away as we hunted high and low for clues and at one point, Old Bear was brought in as a suspect. Thankfully for him, we checked our clues and realised that the paw prints did not match so he was free to return to life in the tepee. We found the culprit in the Squirrels garden; a tiger. He was very sorry for all the mess he had caused so we accepted his apologies and invited him into our classroom as a friend. He had brought us a story to share; 'The Tiger who came to tea.'

All this excitement led us to think about what animal we would invite for tea. The children had wonderful ideas and wrote shopping lists of groceries they would need to buy. The children really did WOW me during our WOW write as they wrote about their animal adventures. I do hope none of you get a knock on the door from a monkey or lion this weekend, they seem to eat a lot!

Today, as a special treat, we welcomed the puppet show from St Michael and All Angels Church to share the story of Creation with us. It was a lovely treat and the children showed good understanding of what we had learnt so far about God's creation.

During Golden time this afternoon, some of the Squirrels chose to prepare for a royal wedding, the Queen even made an appearance with her corgis. It was lovely to see the children so engaged in their learning and allowing their imaginations to run wild.

See you all next week when hopefully we will earn the last few marbles for our marble treat.

Friday 11th May 2018

We have been exploring the Jungle this week and I am pleased to say we all returned safely! There have been some fantastic WOW learning moments this week, the Squirrels have had a positive learning attitude and enjoyed a well deserved Golden time afternoon today.

Our Jungle expedition began by exploring different habitats and environments and thinking about how they are similar and different to ours. We decided we would have to pack a backpack for our adventures so during Literacy the children drew and wrote about what they would take on their Jungle adventure.

In Maths we have continued to explore 'one more' and today we were shape detectives as we further explored 2d and 3d shapes. We have been focusing on the mathematical language to describe them and explaining 'how' we knew what a shape was. Please continue to explore this at home by looking for 2d and 3d shapes as you are out and about.

I do hope you enjoy the delicious banana cakes the children made (if they let you near them)!

Quick Note:

We have had some cases of head lice in school. Please check your child's hair regularly to help prevent the spread of the tiny creatures.

Verwood in Bloom- we are asking for donations to help us with our entry for the competition (soil, plants, old shoes/boots). Please bring them in before half term so we can start planning and potting up. In addition to this, if there are any volunteers that would like to help with the entry please inform a member of staff.

Have a super weekend, see you all next week.

Friday 4th May 2018

This week began with our multi-skills PE session with Mr Sainsbury; practising our throwing and catching skills. We then headed off on a technology hunt around the school, the children really enjoyed this and took photos of their findings using I-pads and cameras. In Maths we have explored the eight-ness of eight and also finding one more than a given number. Some of the Squirrels found it a little tricky to say what one more than a given number was and so it would be brilliant if you can use this language at home and apply it to real life context. For example; when setting the table for dinner, we have 3 cups but we need one more, how many do we need? Our Literacy adventures took us to the school library to find information books about animals, the children really enjoyed this and then spent the afternoon applying their fact finding skills to creating a poster about their chosen animal.

The weather has been kinder to us this week, so we have enjoyed exploring the outdoors space and a spot of gardening.

Have a lovely long weekend, see you all Tuesday.

Friday 27th April 2018

The Squirrels have had a lovely week exploring some of our new resources and the rain certainly did not stop our outdoors learning adventures. In true British style, some of the Squirrels even enjoyed a Barbeque in the rain!

We have been exploring mega beasts during Literacy and they have written some super animal descriptions of their favourite mega beasts. They have enjoyed literacy based games of keyword bingo and practising their sight reading of words by pretending to be the teacher.

We have been marvellous mathematicians exploring adding two Numicon shapes to find the total and beginning to record our findings. We have embedded the seven-ness of seven by practising our number bonds to seven; ask your child what different ways they can make the number seven.

Wow! What a busy week....enjoy your weekend and I look forward to next week's adventures.

Friday 20th April 2018

What an amazing week we have had! The children have been very enthusiastic learners this week and we have taken advantage of the beautiful weather by enjoying our learning outdoors.

We have thoroughly enjoyed sharing the story of 'Noah's Ark' which has been a fantastic start to our new topic. The Squirrels have enjoyed retelling the story to each other using props and building an ark out of various construction. We explored animal movements by listening to music from the 'Saint saens carnival; the elephants and lions' and moving in pairs into Noah's ark.

The children had lots of fun creating fairground and circus rides during our DT day yesterday, they carefully planned and drew their designs before working together to create their chosen ride.

In Maths we have been exploring sequencing times of day and beginning to learn to tell the time using the language related to this and understanding the different times of day. We have also been busy exploring capacity and addition using the Numicon.

I look forward to more animal adventures next week.

Thursday 29th March 2018 Whatever the weather week Spring.

We have had a wonderful week exploring the great outdoors. The children have been super and so engaged and enthusiastic.

The children asked if they could write their favourite moment from the week so I have included some of these on the blog photos.

As you will see, I took a lot of photos! So, make yourselves a cup of tea and settle down with your child and they will talk you through the week's activities.

Have a super Easter break!

Friday 23rd March 2018

We have had a super week exploring our wonderful world; God's creation.

Ask your child to share their learning experiences with you.

See you all on Monday for more adventures as we enjoy 'Whatever the weather week.'

Friday 16th March 2018

We have gone Maths crazy this week! The children have enjoyed exploring number, shape and measure through a variety of games. We have been learning our number bonds to 5 and challenging ourselves to adding two single digit numbers.

Fee, fi, fo, fum! The Squirrels have enjoyed listening to the traditional tale of 'Jack and the beanstalk', we have created wanted posters to describe the giant, enjoyed building the Giant's castle from various construction and re-telling the story using our small world resources.

We are looking forward to exploring more traditional tales next week.

Friday 9th March 2018

I cannot believe it is Friday already! We have had a super couple of weeks of fun learning experiences. We have been scientists, authors, artists and gardeners! The cold weather and snow led to some fantastic opportunities to explore our natural environment. We certainly had lots of fun. The snowy pictures and independent writing produced on Monday blew me away.

This week, we have been reading the story of the 'Three billy goat's gruff.' The children have enjoyed creating new homes for the troll to live and wrote some fantastic sentences to describe his new home.

We are fortunate that Mr Williams (Evie's Grandad) has kindly offered to come in and help with gardening on a weekly basis. We had a lovely time planting lettuce seeds ready for the children to enjoy as super salads. The creativity did not stop there as yesterday, we baked our Fairtrade jam tarts, which I'm sure many of you enjoyed today at the tea party.

This morning's visit to the library was a wonderful experience, the children were an absolute pleasure and were a credit to the school. I was very proud of them. Thank you to the parents who were able to walk to and from the library, we were very grateful for your help. At the library, we enjoyed listening to stories and rhymes and choosing a book to borrow. The library have kindly allowed each child to borrow a book through our school account. The children have brought these home to share with you and we will return them to the library before the Easter holidays.

Happy reading!

Have a lovely weekend.

W/e Friday 23rd February 2018

Apologies for the delayed blog, unfortunately I have experienced technical issues which prevented me from uploading last week's blog.

We had a wonderful week of learning as you will see from the photographs.

Our pancake race was lots of fun and all the children participated so well, thank you to the adults who joined in too!

We love to take advantage of impromptu learning experiences in Squirrels and were fortunate to visit the pond where we have frog spawn growing. This was a lovely experience to share and we will be observing the changes on a weekly basis. It certainly looks as though we will have lots of frogs!

The new construction has proved very popular and the children have shown what super imaginations they have as we have had temples and cities built. They have shown excellent teamwork skills and perseverance to complete their models.

Our phonics learning has been lots of fun as we have been practising our sound recognition through games and developing our gross and fine motor control through dough disco.

Making our own fresh orange juice proved a very popular choice on Friday. We enjoyed learning where Fairtrade oranges are grown and tasting our own freshly made juice was given the thumbs up!

We do hope you can join us on Friday afternoon to share our Fairtrade learning experiences.

Friday 9th February 2018

Half term already! We have had a super half term and it was lovely to see so many of you yesterday enjoying sharing your child's learning. We certainly keep ourselves busy in Squirrels class!

We had a lovely marble treat day today with lots of fun activities across the whole day. We enjoyed our marble treat snack; making and eating a lovely fruit salad. Some of the children were chosen to be waiters and waitresses to serve the fruit salad and drinks. We enjoyed the sunshine this afternoon out on the bikes and exploring lots of activities in our outside area.

A couple of reminders:

Please ensure your child brings a full PE kit into school on the first Monday back and that it is ALL CLEARLY NAMED. Unfortunately, sometimes things do go walkabouts but if they are named then they usually will turn up.

If you are out shopping over half term and purchase any Fairtrade labelled products, please bring in the sticker/label as we will be exploring and celebrating Fairtrade fortnight the first two weeks back at school.

Have a super half term break, enjoy spending time with your lovely children and I look forward to seeing them all after half term for more adventures.

Friday 2nd February 2018

It has been a lovely week of learning in Squirrels. We have been reading the story of 'The Elves and The Shoemaker' and this has led to some super learning.

In Literacy we discussed if we could have magic shoes, what their powers would be. This ignited their imaginations and creativity and the ideas they came up with were wonderful. They drew designs of their magic shoes and wrote about them too. I have been extremely impressed with their writing this week. The Squirrels are wowing us with their reading too, they are obviously practising their sounds and ditties at home so thank you for your support with this.

The role-play area has become the shoes workshop and the elves have been very busy up there. In the Maths area we have a shoe shop and I can honestly say that on Monday afternoon it looked like I had walked into Clarks on the last week of the summer holidays! There were shoes everywhere and lots of frustrated customers waiting to have their feet measured! Thankfully, things have calmed this week as the elves have increased their work rate and the shopkeepers are learning to manage their customers. It has certainly proved a very popular role-play.

Our Maths learning this week has continued to focus on reinforcing our counting skills. We have also been exploring measure as we have measured each other's feet and recorded our findings. We have introduced a lot of new vocabulary which the children have been using not only during Maths, but applied it across other areas of their learning; length, width, height, long, short, tall, longer, shorter, taller, higher, longest, shortest, tallest, highest. Today we made the most of the sunshine and explored shapes in our outdoors area, it was lots of fun and there was some fantastic learning taking place with the children explaining how they knew the object was a particular shape.

We have nearly filled our marble jar so hopefully will be having a treat before half term, more details to follow next week.

Have a super weekend, see you all on Monday.

Friday 26th January 2018

This week in Literacy we have been playing literacy based games to practise our phonics and keywords. The children have also been writing their own versions of the story of the three pigs. The children have engaged so well with this story and the activities have flowed from their ideas. Next week, we will be exploring a different traditional tale, more will be revealed on Monday.

Our Maths focus has been on counting accurately and in order into teen numbers and matching the correct number of objects to the numeral card. We have also been exploring one more and one less. Encourage your child to use this language at home when carrying out everyday tasks.

Please continue to support your child to practise their sounds and keywords. I have added a link to the Read write Inc sound pronunciation guide for your reference.

WOW! What a super week we have had. We have been very busy designers, scientists and builders in Squirrels this week.

We started the week by exploring materials and testing a variety to decide which we thought would be most suitable for the fourth little pig's house. We then shared our ideas from our home learning designs and drew a design in class based on our findings from our materials testing. Once our plans were in place we set about building the house, this involved teamwork and a great deal of perseverance. The houses looked fantastic and on testing day, we all nervously awaited the arrival of the Big Bad Wolf to try and blow them down. We had great fun and afterwards spent time discussing why we thought our house building was successful or what improvements we could make if we were to do it again.

The building continued as we now have 'The Three Little Pigs building site' in our outdoor area, they have been extremely busy buying bricks from the builders merchants and building their houses.

We continued to explore the four-ness of four this week and the children have been buying their fruit snack with Numicon and 'real money.' We are continuing to develop our work on shape and applied our knowledge and skills to our house designing and building. The estimation station has proved very popular during Explorer time and they have impressed me with their new Mathematical vocabulary which they are applying across their learning.

I am delighted to announce that we have appointed two class Fairtrade representatives this week. We learnt a little more about Fairtrade and democracy before voting for two children to represent our class at school meetings. I was over-whelmed by how many put themselves forward for the position. The confidence they demonstrated as they explained to the rest of the class why they thought they would be the best person for the job was wonderful to see. Our class representatives will attend meetings with Miss Brown and the other class representatives and feedback to us how we can support this worthwhile cause.

I know I am certainly ready for a rest after such a busy but delightful week of learning. Have a lovely weekend and I look forward to seeing you all on Monday.

Friday 12th January 2018

The children have engaged well with our new topic this week and have thoroughly enjoyed re-telling the story of 'The Three Little Pigs' using our story sack, small world play and puppets.

During circle time we have talked about feelings, emotions and showing kindness to others. We have started to explore if the pigs were right to punish the wolf in a pot of boiling water and explored what we think really happened to the wolf at the end of the story. The Squirrels enjoyed expressing the feelings of the Three little pigs and the big bad wolf through drama.

In Maths we have been practising our counting skills and learning to estimate, they have really enjoyed this and are beginning to use the language associated with this; 'more than/less than/equal/the same.'

We have had a busy week but the Squirrels have settled back into our routines very well.

Have a lovely weekend, see you all Monday.

Friday 5th January 2018

Happy new year! It has been lovely to hear all the children's Christmas news.

We have had a lovely few days settling back into Squirrels, exploring the classroom again and familiarising ourselves with our school routines.

In PE this week, we explored moving our bodies in different ways and using our bodies to create shapes. The children enjoyed this and showed good problem-solving skills and team work. We have also been working on developing our throwing and catching skills using a large ball.

In literacy, we thought about the gifts we had received as a class from Santa and then independently wrote a thank you letter to him. We have also been exploring literacy based games and activities. Everyone has chosen a new reading book this week and it is evident that many of them have been practising their sounds and reading over the holidays. Thank you for your support with this.

We begin our new topic on Monday, the Squirrels are very excited to find out what our new role-play area will be.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the kindness and generosity you showed at Christmas time, I will enjoy the pampering and relaxation!

Have a lovely weekend, see you all Monday for more adventures.

Friday 15th December 2017

Squirrels have had a fantastic week of Christmas fun and are all now ready for a well deserved break to enjoy the festivities with our families.

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas time and we look forward to seeing you all in the New year for more adventures!

Friday 8th December 2017

Christmas has certainly arrived in Squirrels class! We have had a lovely week exploring the Christmas based learning in our classroom.

We received a lovely letter from The Jolly Christmas Postman who had sent us a copy of his book to read. The Christmas Post Office has been very busy with parcel and post deliveries, we have measured the parcels and been busy wrapping them too. The Elves have been busy in Santa's workshop and Santa has been keeping a careful eye on all the Squirrels from his house.

We have continued to share the Christmas story and talked about the true meaning of Christmas, sharing our reflection thoughts and prayers with the class. The reading teepee has been transformed into the nativity scene with the children enjoying re-enacting the story (slightly adapted versions).The Shepherd has been searching for his sheep around the classroom and the Wise Men were seen in the Christmas Post Office!

Hopefully you all enjoyed your Christmas cake, the children thoroughly enjoyed decorating them and the festive baking continued this week with making mince pies.

Today, we enjoyed our marble treat which was to have a Christmas activity morning. The Squirrels have made some fantastic decorations, including the table decoration which came home with them today. We will be continuing with our crafts next week.

If you have not already done so, please ensure your child brings into school with them on Monday, a plain coloured t-shirt for our Nativity production.

Have a lovely weekend and I look forward to more Christmas craziness next week.

Friday 1st December

We have been very busy over the past two weeks in Squirrels so I am sharing a range of photographs.

In Literacy we wrote a set of instructions to make a paper lantern, then followed these instructions to make our own. They look lovely hanging in the classroom and I know many of the Squirrels have made them at home too!

In Maths we have been exploring shape, pattern and a range of counting games. The children have enjoyed playing a range of Maths related games, particularly dominoes. This has helped them to develop not only their Maths skills but also their social skills to take turns and listen to each other.

The Christmas preparations are underway, cakes are baked and due to be iced next week. I know the Squirrels are looking forward to the new role-play area on Monday and lots more Christmas fun.

It was lovely to share your child's learning at the parent consultations, thank you for your support.

Have a lovely weekend and I look forward to the festive fun continuing next week in Squirrels.

Friday 17th November 2017

We have been so busy this week and the Squirrels have amazed us with their fantastic writing, reading and counting.

In Literacy, the children have been busy choosing, drawing and labelling what they would pack in a picnic to take to the Moon, they certainly would not go hungry! We are continuing to develop our use of our phonics in our writing, using our 'Fred fingers' to sound out the word before we write it.

We are continuing to explore rhyme through various stories and poems, they are challenging themselves to spot the rhyming words.

We have gone number crazy this week in Maths. The Squirrels have been busy practising their counting to 10 and exploring the Numicon pegs to create Numicon shape patterns.

We have enjoyed using the 'Beebots' in class this week, imagining we are sending them to explore the Moon. This has involved careful programming of the Beebots to ensure they travel in the directions we require!

Have a lovely weekend and I look forward to more adventures next week.

Friday 10th November

This week we launched our new topic 'Starry, starry night.'

We have had a fantastic week of learning. The children enjoyed creating their own fireworks pictures in Art, providing a spectacular display in our classroom.

On Tuesday, we had a mystery parcel arrive in Squirrels, it was very exciting! We had lots of fun guessing what it might be and were delighted to find inside the box Baby Bear and his belongings, including a story for us to share; 'Whatever Next!' It has caused much curiosity and the children have used their questioning skills during a hot seating session when Baby Bear answered many of their questions.

In Maths we have been practising our counting skills during our daily Maths challenge and explored shape by creating rockets.

The Squirrels have been busy using a variety of construction materials to build rockets with many visiting the Moon!

Friday 3rd November 2017

Following on from our marble treat at the end of last term, we have been reading the story of 'We're going on a Bear hunt.' This has helped us to learn some prepositions; 'over', 'under' and 'through.' We then used this language in our P.E. session, using the large apparatus to

re-enact going on a bear hunt.

During Literacy, we created a story map using actions to retell the story, the children really enjoyed this. They then created a new character for their version of the story, this has led to some fantastic writing from the children.

The new writing toolkits have been very popular with many of the children. Percy the Park keeper has had very long lists of jobs written for him!

In Maths we have explored the Numicon rods, we had lots of fun ordering them by size, creating shapes and patterns.

Now the children are fully settled into school life, if anyone is able to spare some time to help in class, please let me know as I am always grateful for an extra pair of hands!

Have a fantastic weekend. If you are watching any firework displays, enjoy, stay safe and I look forward to hearing about it next week when we will be creating our own displays in Art.

Friday 20th October 2017 'Whatever the weather week.'

We have had an absolutely fantastic week. It has been lovely to see the excitement in the children's faces as they approach the next adventure and we have certainly had a lot of those!

The children have thoroughly embraced outdoors learning and we have been outside literally whatever the weather. The experiences have ranged from the weird weather on Monday to a robin in the classroom and spotting deer on the school field during our leaf hunt!

The storm on Monday night caused chaos in our playground as I had forgotten to lock Percy's shed and the wind had blown everything around the playground. Thankfully, the Squirrels are brilliant at tidying and soon set about sorting the objects by their initial sounds and we had a lovely tidy playground again.

The storm also caused problems for Percy's animals as they lost their homes. The Squirrels found the animals hiding around the field and designed, then built the animals new homes.

The hot chocolate was very popular and today was extra special as we finished the week with our marble treat which included marshmallows on our hot chocolate. We were very lucky to have Mrs Macdonald help us to make our popcorn ready for our cinema morning, the children watched with fascination as the corn popped. Obviously, you cannot go to the cinema without a ticket, so the children made their own tickets and paid for their popcorn with Numicon. Everyone enjoyed the movie; 'We're going on a bear hunt' and related this to our own version on the story that we had created; 'We're going on a leaf hunt.'

Hopefully the children have shared their daily adventures with you as I could be typing for a long time if I listed them all here! Off now though for a well deserved half term break for all.

I am extremely proud of every one of my Squirrels, they have had a super half term and settled so well.

Have an enjoyable week and I look forward to more adventures with them next half term.

Friday 13th October 2017

This week, we have been busy using our increasing phonics knowledge to practise our letter formation. The children are engaging very well with this and are keen to show off their new skills. We then applied these skills by writing and drawing about some objects we found during our walk.

The biggest excitement of the week, was converting a shed space into Percy the Park Keeper's shed. I provided the children with the resources and they worked together as a team to create a wonderful outdoor role-play area. They have adopted various roles from leaf collecting to planting to making Percy's cup of tea! We will continue to build upon this next week as we embark on our 'whatever the weather' week.

Please remember to send your child into school on Monday with a waterproof coat and 'wellies'. The full details for next week can be found on the class page under 'class letters and information.'

Friday 6th October 2017

We have taken advantage of the beautiful autumn weather this week by taking our learning outside.

We have been lucky to have two visitors this week. The first, was Percy the Park Keeper, who joined us for a story to introduce our new topic 'Amazing Autumn/Percy the Park Keeper.'

We also had the pleasure of the company of Nurse Lucy, who brought along Healthy Ted. Nurse Lucy explained that she will be returning after Christmas to see us but for now we helped her measure and weigh Healthy Ted and check his hearing. This led to many pop-up doctor's surgeries in Squirrels classroom during explorer time.

The children have been exploring Numicon in Maths and have shown some fantastic problem solving as we explored how many different ways we could represent a number using Numicon.

In Literacy, we have shared some of Percy's stories and we had a lovely walk around the school grounds looking for and collecting signs of autumn. The children have learnt more new sounds in RWInc and have been practising writing these sounds. Hopefully, they will be sharing these at home with you.

Thank you for your support at the class meeting, it was lovely to see so many of you. The PowerPoint is on the class page for your reference.

Have a lovely weekend, I look forward to seeing everyone for more autumn adventures next week.

Friday 29th September 2017

We have had a 'souper' week in Squirrels.

This week, the Squirrels have been learning about harvest around the world. We have explored where our food comes from and how it travels to the shops for us to buy. They have enjoyed building a farm in the small world area and in the construction area the children have been busy building tracks to transport the food from the farm to the shops.

In Maths, we have explored pattern by printing with fruits and vegetables and using the Numicon to help us count and sort the vegetables ready for our soup. We also have been very busy writing shopping lists and buying and selling our produce at the farmers market. Our focus this week has been the number 'one', the children used 'real' one penny coins at the farmers market.

They impressed me with their culinary skills and it would seem I have a class full of chefs!

Thank you for your vegetable contributions and for joining us for the harvest soup tasting, it was lovely to see so many of you.

Friday 22nd September

Wow! Another super week in Squirrels, as you will see from the photographs.

This week, we joined the rest of the school for our daily worship and the Harvest service this morning. We have fully changed for P.E. and the children have impressed me with their developing independence skills. They have obviously been practising at home. Thank you for your support with this.

We have been developing our fine motor skills through our daily 'funky fingers' activities, the children have enjoyed the challenge of using chopsticks or copying a pattern on the peg board.

The children were introduced to Kipper this week and we celebrated his birthday today as a special class reward. We made a fruit salad for our snack time and the Squirrels were very busy in the writing area weighing his presents and creating cards and invitations for him.

We have also talked about staying safe as part of our learning about 'I am special, I am me!' as the children explored the bikes and road safety in the Squirrels outdoor area.

I look forward to seeing everyone for more adventures next week.

Friday 15th September

We have had a fantastic start to our learning journey in Squirrels. The children have settled very well into their new routines and it has been lovely to see them all looking so smart in their new uniform.

As you will see from the photographs, we have had a very busy week exploring our new environment and making new friends.

Hopefully, the children have shared some of their experiences with you at home but if not then these photographs are an ideal prompt to encourage them to do so.

Thank you for your support and please continue to encourage your children to dress and undress themselves as this is a great help when changing for P.E.

Have a lovely rest over the weekend Squirrels ready for more adventures next week!